It’s been a while but we’re back with a new podcast! In this episode, I am joined this time around by Chris Wilson, Lead Designer/Creator of Path of Exile. As Diablo is moving into maintenance mode and PoE is pushing out content left, right and centre, I thought it would be great to chat with Chris and contrast the two games. Take a listen and enjoy.

If you’d like there to be less of a podcasts drought and would like to be a part of one, contact me @hcxanth on twitter or email [email protected] and we can get back to more diablo podcasts on a more regular basis.

lol, it’s so sad how far Blizzard has fallen. The D3 podcast is literally about PoE now because D3 is basically dead. The idea of new content over at Blizzard is +1000% to this skill, and -250% to that skill. I knew things were going to be bad the moment they said the game would be playable online only, and then have an auction house but how did things get this far. Even I didn’t see this coming. I honestly thought after playing the PoE beta that yeah, this game is pretty cool, but once D3 drops it’s game over. Fast forward a few years and I played the PoE expansion Fall of Oriath and now I’m thinking wow, it’s pretty much game over for D3 now.

Everybody thought it would be over for PoE once D3 launches. I’m so happy to be wrong. PoE deserves its success, just like D3 deserves what’s happening to it. The difference is one company maxing profit at all costs and the other one implementing a vision at all costs. PoE is more Diablo modern Diablo ever will be. It’s just a shame i do not have the time anymore to REALLY get into it. Still binge-play it every once in a while though. It is a great game and i love to see it featured here.

I have a lot of respect for Chris Wilson. He actually spends the time talking to people who play the game. Much like Blizzard North did in the good old days. Blizzard’s community team could learn a few tricks.

I respect him a lot as well, but not so much for talking and listening to the community, which is cool, but Jay Wilson did that as well before things went south.

Like lordon wrote, i think it is INSANE to remortgage your frigging house and everything you have to pay four nerds to code your map generator and basic game engine right before a true Goliath in form of D3 gets released. Crazy.

But yeah, it is cool how he deals with the community, how he reads and posts on reddit or how he treats certain members like Kripp or ZiggyD, gives them interviews and is sincerely grateful for what they are doing.

All these companies that made Torchlight 2, Grim Dawn, PoE etc. needed was Diablo 3 to crap the bed – which it did. It opened the door for all of these companies to surpass Blizzard in the arpg real, which they have done. It didn’t take long to realize D3 was crap and everyone looked elsewhere.

I check this site to see if Diablo 2 is being remastered. Sadly for some reason the Diablo franchise is once again being ignored even when it comes to remasters.

I’ll also add that Grim Dawn is also beating out Diablo big-time. If you love arpgs you owe it to yourself to buy it. No dedicated online but it is worth every penny. The current diablo franchise might not even be top 5.

Look I’ve been playing D3 since vanilla and Diablo since 1995, they completely deserve what’s going on. D3 dying literally by the minute and the loyal player base moving to PoE or Grim Dawn, we gave Blizzards hundred of chances to make the game better, to improve, to give some proper feedback, and what they did? Silence, avoid the community and just go with the other games, abandoned completely the franchise…..D3 deserves what’s getting now.

I bought the Necro, and I’m done with it, I’m playing S12, to give myself the pleasure of saying goodbye to this game after more than 20Y and I’m fully moving to PoE…..not a single penny from my side for Blizzard.

Then you are not a real diablo fan … simple ! I played D1 , D2+LOD , D3+ROS , i really like all games and i know that the games are different from each other , both in the years they where made in and the gameplay i agree that you can do a bit more in D2 but D3 is really fun like is But its ok go to poe shit , its where all the stupid crying kids and D3 haters dwell i will support and love the diablo franchise till dead bcoz i’m a real fan of all thats diablo

You sound like a crying kid in your sad comment. First you say PoE is shit (crying) Then you say its for crying kids. Maybe its a game for you after all. Why would you hate on a game, and then hate on people hating. How dumb are you?

@ the real ERG, don’t knock something until you have fully experienced it, I was once narrow-minded toward POE like you, until trying it recently, 300+ hours later I have to admit, POE is a damn good game, especially from the skill tree mechanics system. I’ve also played and stood by the diablo franchise since Diablo 1996 and Warcraft 1/2 before it, I’ve been a Blizz fanboy since, including wow. That being said, I would never have viewed myself playing POE, but I won’t look back and don’t regret giving POE a chance. Try it properly and see, that doesn’t make you any less a Diablo fan, but POE has it’s place among the best.

GGG needs to make money somehow & if they don’t want to charge for the game itself, selling cosmetics (& stash tabs) is a far better way than selling anything that would give the player more power (over people that didn’t buy said item). If they were pay to win people would crucify them, but they sell cosmetics & some people don’t like that? If you don’t like the cosmetics, you don’t have to buy them, you can still play the game (for free).

So you’re saying the developers selected the best business model possible for their game.

How is that a bad thing?

Let’s contrast that with D3’s initial business model which was the auction house, and work out what impact it had on the game. Hmmm, let’s see, making legendary items stupidly rare and 99.99% of items useless crap, meaning most people had to go shopping in order to progress in the game? How good was that business model?

Or Blizzard buying GGG… you know, like they did in the old days, with BlizzNorth, when they were great. I guess nowadays GGG is too big to be bought anyway.

Doesn’t really matter anymore anyway. PoE has greatly improved over the years. It is still behind D3 in terms of production value, i guess, but they did a good job of catching up and the game looks, sounds and feels pretty good. They don’t need Blizzards money, they are good on their own. My opinion.

Nothing is “too big to be bought”, especially when you have Blizzard cash. I wouldn’t be surprised if Blizzard had considered it, although buying up other studios is not something they typically do. They also want to control things in house, so likely it’d require GGG personnel to move to the US, which adds a whole extra layer of complexity to any deal.